We shoved fried baloney sandwiches into our mouths and stared at the TV, where the residents of Bucolic Falls were living their best lives in the Hallmark Channel classic It Turns Out Life Was My Dream Job All Along So I Guess I Just Finished a Forty-Year Internship.
We, on the other hand, were wiping cheap lunch meat grease from our chins.
I’d had enough. As the credits rolled, I jumped up from the couch and announced that this family – like main character Macalister (Mac) Macmillian – was going to start passionately living each day like it was our last.
I hustled my wife Melissa and our seven-year-old twins onto the next flight to Disney World. A thousand dollars each for last-minute tickets, but I’d be damned if a Quicken budget notification would hamper our Last Day! Besides, Timmy and Tammy’s non-stop giggling through the private breakfast I finagled with Elsa and Olaf was so worth it (“Five hundred bucks,” Olaf had whispered, twiggy arm outstretched. “Let it go.”).
Over at Epcot, I cut loose and “drank around the world.” My first drinks since the arson thing fourteen years ago! I told Melissa I’d go back to AA tomorrow – whoops, what tomorrow? Haha! I even snuck the twins some sangria. Last chance for new experiences!
We checked out of the Disney Four Seasons, rented a stretch Escalade, and checked into a Miami Beach oceanfront mansion that sleeps twenty-two. Not that I did much sleeping – I finally tried cocaine!
What Last Day luxury! The Buckets O’ Bubbly package meant champagne in every bedroom, and I got hours of hilarious video of the twins mixing 2008 Bollinger La Grande Année with their raspberry juice boxes and staggering around dodging Melissa, who really hammed it up as the “frustrated” mom.
Hanging out of a Cessna 182 over Napa Valley (yeah, I know, skydiving – Last Day cliche alert!), I got a text from my boss firing me for not showing up for seventeen days. Okay Patricia, you go ahead and analyze annuities on your Last Day.
We made a pit stop home for a Last Day blowout with our beloved family and friends, and it was awesome, even though I had to rewear the Versace outfit I’d just picked up in Monte Carlo because nothing at home fit any more. But I guess that’s why nobody’s written The Last Day of Your Life Diet, am I right?
The twins rocked it like little Cocktail Tom Cruises behind the bar, and everyone boogied their asses off to Ariana Grande’s two-hour set in the basement. A couple folks were put off by the three-foot-tall grass surrounding the house, complaining my niece had to be rescued when she dropped her Kobe burger and found herself in the middle of a copperhead/rabid mole turf war. And that it made playing horseshoes impossible. Well pardon me, Aunt Helen, if I don’t mow the lawn on my last day on Earth.
When everyone left, I bit into a leftover lobster toast with avocado and Espelette pepper and felt a searing pain in an upper molar. But guess what, going to the dentist is not on anyone’s bucket list, so I popped a Percocet from a 2008 knee surgery and hopped online to book a Last Day trip to Turks and Caicos. Let me tell you, if you want to forget about tooth pain for a minute, try finding your fourteen credit cards maxed out and your checking account overdrawn. There was still the kids’ college fund, but at best that was a Last Day trip to Dave & Buster’s.
Melissa loudly pointed out I could have saved money by booking more modestly-priced celebrity golf packages and spa treatments. I turned toward her in the dark (FirstEnergy had just cut off our power), and voiced my incredulity that she failed to appreciate the necessity of a three-hour, aromatic hot oil, eight-handed massage on one’s Last Day.
But then it hit me. Not only her shoe, but that in the movie, Mac had his epiphany after becoming independently wealthy as an unethical, high-powered stockbroker and not after ten years at an insurance company in middle fucking management.
Today I have no home, no job, and six teeth. The Louis Vuitton valise containing all my worldly possessions was stolen, which is a bummer, especially because after a few months on the street scrounging for meals my old pants finally fit again.
The only bright spot is that Melissa and the twins have stopped spitting on me so often since they moved in with Bob, my former cubiclemate. He even got his insurance to cover the kids’ rehab.
But don’t think this means I’ve given up living each day like it’s my last. Today I am going to grab the bull by the horns. The bull next to the trough I’m living in on this cattle farm. And I am going to do my level best to passionately impale myself upon them.
